Duterte Orders US Advisers out of Southern Philippines

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks to reporters in Davao City, on the southern island of Mindanao, September 5, 2016. (Manman Dejeto/AFP)
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Agence France Presse

President Rodrigo Duterte ratcheted up his feud with the United States on Monday, ordering all American special forces out of the southern Philippines where they have been advising local troops battling Muslim extremists.

The Filipino leader, the first to hail from the south and who claims Muslim ancestry, has been stepping up efforts to bring peace to the southern Philippines, where decades-long insurgencies with Muslim and communist rebels have claimed more than 150,000 lives.

Last month he restarted peace talks with the largest separatist group, the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which like others has been fighting since the 1970s for an independent Islamic state or autonomous rule.

US advisers in the area help train Filipino troops but are barred from engaging in combat except in self-defense.

Previously, about 500-600 US personnel rotated through the Mindanao region but in 2014, then-defense secretary Voltaire Gazmin said this would be cut back to 200.

Duterte did not specify when or how many Americans would be expelled but said the Philippines alignment with the West was at the root of the persistent Muslim insurgency.

"These US special forces, they have to go in Mindanao," he told a gathering of government employees.

"The (Muslim) people will become more agitated. If they see an American, they will really kill him."

The US embassy could not be reached for comment.

The United States is Manila's main military ally and the Philippines' colonial ruler until 1946. In his speech, Duterte showed photographs and cited accounts of how US troops killed Muslims during America's occupation of the Philippines in the early-1900s to explain his decision.